I adore this video by Brush With Bamboo – a family who converted their typical American suburban home and garden into a lush self-sufficient paradise and started a bamboo toothbrush company. I want to be adopted by this family!  Their toothbrushes are entirely vegetable-based unlike the bamboo toothbrushes you typically see on Amazon or in health food shops in the UK which have Nylon bristles.

The thing about toothbrushes is that every single plastic toothbrush that has ever been made is still intact. I don’t even want to do the maths on that. I ordered two types of toothbrushes from the UK seller ecco-verde.co.uk. ‘Ecobamboo’ come with soft or hard Nylon4 bristles that are BPA free. ‘TEA Natura’ brushes are entirely made from bamboo, including the bristles. Both are packaged in plant-based material. Brilliant! You could also go for German engineering with beech wood and natural boar bristles from naturalspasupplies.co.uk which allegedly “make tooth brushing truly pleasant” (hmm…. boar bristles). There are many other types on the market to try. I have used my bamboo toothbrush for many weeks now and I really like it. I don’t know about the eco-credentials of bamboo or Nylon. I believe that Nylon takes between 30 and 40 years to break down and wood and bamboo will of course compost quite naturally.